Creative Digital Media and Gaming courses at Salford

The Creative Digital Media and Gaming sector is thriving in Greater Manchester with major employers in cybersecurity, media, e-commerce and more. The University of Salford has a state-of-the-art campus at MediaCity, the north-west's leading centre for film, journalism, radio, TV, digital media and gaming with companies such as the Steamforged Games, BBC, and ITV being based there.

Having a campus at MediaCity means our students will be learning in one of the leading technology hubs in the UK. Our lecturers have built great working relationships with our neighbours which often translates into practical work experience or networking opportunities for our students. We also regularly have guest speakers from the media and gaming industries who often go on to offer work experience or internships.

Our courses are also designed to allow and encourage you to undertake live briefs and placements, meaning you could be working on producing real work for real clients while you study.

We understand that choosing a degree can be difficult. Start by thinking about which area of creative media technology interests you, and what job you can see yourself doing in the future. You’ll then be able to see which of our courses match up best with your ambitions.

However, it’s important to remember that with most degrees the skills you learn are transferable to other disciplines and when you graduate with us, you’ll have learnt a full range of skills to prepare you to enter a fast-paced industry.

We recommend you attend our upcoming Open Day to find out more about our campus, courses, and student life at Salford.

Don’t worry, you won’t be expected to spend large amounts of money on professional camera, lighting and development equipment. Everything you need for your studies is available through our facilities and equipment stores. You may wish to purchase their own laptop and hard drive, but these are personal choices as you will have access to computer suites with all the software you’ll need for your projects. You can also choose to loan a laptop through the Library for up to four weeks at a time.

Throughout the course you will have the chance to learn new skills and create industry standard work which you can then put towards your portfolio. You may even create work outside your assignment briefs which can also be used. 

To find out more listen to one of our BA (Hons) Digital Media and XR tutors and a current undergraduate student discussing Digital Media and their portfolio, in our podcast Campfire Talks.

Our TV studios are industry-standard, so much so that they are actually used by the industry. The BBC have used them for a variety of broadcasts, such as the Olympics and Christmas music concerts, and they’re equipped with the same audio-visual systems used by the ITV and Sky too.

The studios have green screen facilities (more on those below) as well as basic props so you can design and build sets for a range of projects, from game shows to news broadcasts.

All these studios link to our control rooms and the feeds can either be edited in the control rooms and transmitted live, or saved and edited at a later date.

They contain eight Sony HXC 500 HD broadcast cameras, a Sony DWX wireless microphone system and a ETC ION Lighting Desk with robotic lighting. Not sure what that all means yet? Don’t worry, at this point you just need to know that it’s a similar set-up to that used by the BBC, ITV and Sky so when you secure your first job at a broadcaster, you’ll feel right at home from day one.

These allow you to create effects such as those you see on weather reports and incorporates a camera system and 3D graphics software.

They are the same standard as those used by broadcasters and production companies, and are used by the BBC to produce programmes such as those on children’s TV. When this happens, you’ll often get the chance to support, giving you hands-on experience of real productions.

We’ve got all the hardware and software you need to make sure you’ll know just how to create, edit, mix and master audio for film, television and animation. Our main studios feature Avid S6 consoles – a similar set-up to those at our MediaCityUK neighbours, such as Dock10 and ITV.

Elsewhere, we have Mac suites where you can use and learn the software used by the professionals, as well as a dedicated foley studio, an audio production and post-production suite, a dubbing theatre and several edit suites.

It all means that you’ll have plenty of opportunity to learn all aspects of audio production and find your niche.

Depending on your course, you may need to create a range of physical items, from product prototypes to models for stop-go animation.

Our MakerSpace is available for you to bring your designs to life using 3D scanners and printers, power tools and a range of art and craft materials. Experienced technicians are also on hand to show you how everything works and make sure you know exactly how to get the best from the equipment.

Interested in stop-frame animation? You’ll be able to use one of our five animation booths equipped with industry standard lighting, grip, software and cameras and learn just what it takes to make your ideas and storyboards a reality.

Our dedicated editing suites will allow you to learn and excel in all elements of post-production work. They feature 4k monitors and 5.1 surround sound systems, so you can pick out all details of your work as you create your masterpiece, as well as all the software you’ll need and use when you start your career.

This includes Avid Media Composer (used for editing much of the broadcast TV you’ll see), Da Vinci Resolve (used for colour finishing across a range of TV programmes) as well as Adobe Creative Cloud.

Cameras, lighting kits and mics – they’re all essential to media production. But don’t worry, you won’t need to spend thousands of pounds to get the set-up you need – we have a fully equipped equipment store available for you to use and take out industry-standard kit.

From the Panasonic VariCam (used to film Netflix shows such as Ozark and Orange is the New Black) to the ARRI Alexa (as used on The Mandalorian) and a host of other kit from companies like Canon, AKG and Sennheiser, you’ll be able to shoot and record on location in the high quality you need to bring your vision to life.